The Blog Studio

I’m going to let you know surprising things in this blog post. Even though I don’t know how to drive, I’m really into cars.  Even though I work as a professional geek my entire education and half my working life have been centered around really, really obscure and nerdy books.

I was watching a Top Gear clip on YouTube, with Michael Gambon (you probably know him as the bootleg Dumbledore from Harry Potter or as Philip Marlow from the BBC Singing Detective). When Clarkson is talking to Gambon, he mentions a Beckett theatre production he was performing in. In this incarnation of the play there is no spoken dialogue. Only a recording of an actress is heard, while a man (Gambon in this version) lays on a bed. There is is a camera above him, that is just focused on his face and throws a tight close up of his face onto a huge screen the audience can see. The camera gets closer and closer to his face as the play progresses. It’s a play called Krapp’s Last Tape, and despite having premiered in 1958, it feels and acts like it’s from the future.

What does this have to do with anything?

Many people argue that Samuel Beckett is the best writer in English to ever wake up pissed at the world. That’s not my opinion (Jane Austen FTW!), but it’s a solid argument I can respect. In the play Gambon is discussing, there are many parallels between what we create on the web and the way the play is stage. No dialogue. A disembodied, recorded, mechanically provided voice. Watching someone on video. Being stuck in front of a camera. Watching a piece of technology while actually being there in person. There are probably dozens of more significant parallels we can draw between this staging of Beckett’s play and the web, social media and technology.

I’m starting to wonder, possibly even be slightly worried about high art and technology not getting frisky enough. If Beckett created this play that is so relevant to how we’re using technology now, what is being created right now that will be relevant 50 years from now? There are certainly plenty of interesting futurists out there, like Ray Kurtzweil and Douglass Rushkoff. Still, I view them as brilliant technical people, not artists in the Beckett sense, though of course, these kinds of lines can get blurry at the edges.

I’m putting this out to you, people of the interwebz, because I sincerely want to know the answers. Who are the tech Beckett’s at work right now that people will be discussing over SkyNet 50 years hence?

This was the first weekend up at the family cottage since my dad died last month. It was hard, as you’d imagine. But wow, the weather was amazing, and the leaves were showing off their best fall colours. Here are a few of the hundred or so shots I took.

Instead of writing this, I really should be packing. Tomorrow morning I’ve got a 6 hour drive with the kids and dog up to my favorite place on earth, Killarney Provincial Park. No place sings to me quite like this.

Getting ready to leave work is a harrowing experience. I’ve checked and doubled checked, and everything is covered. I’ve got an extremely capable couple of partners manning the desks back at the ranch. Still, it’s hard to shake that “what did I forget” feeling.

While I’m away, I hope to be taking tons of photos with my new camera. I’ve got what feels like 100 pounds of art supplies packed and ready too. Creatively, this should be a blast.

I’m back September 1, and I’ve got a couple of big announcements to make when I’m back. Enjoy the rest of August everyone!

I’ve never posted a video from youtube et al here (to the best of my knowledge), so the fact that I’m doing so now should give you some idea of how I feel about this video. Don’t let the title fool you, this will make you feel great (if not a bawling mess).

If you’re reading this via RSS or email, there may not be video player above. If not click on this to view the video.

I’m deeply sorry for contributing another “I love my iPhone” post to a web sagging under the mass of their combined weight. But I can’t help myself.

It’s just that good.

Being in Canada, I’m simultaneously late and early to the game. Because of our limited and bass ackward carriers, Apple is not selling, and has no short term plans to sell the iPhone in Canada. Until very recently, it was impossible to use the iPhone on a Canadian cell network. With the recent release of a couple of software unlocks though, the situation has changed.

It’s now possible to run a program to “unlock” the iPhone from it’s AT&T dependency, allowing it to run on any EDGE equipped network (Rogers and Fido in Canada). This has opened the door for technological opportunists to purchase iPhones in the US, and sell them unlocked, at a markup, in Canada. The market for these grey-market phones is hot hot hot, as I discovered when calling around to find one. Craigslist pointed me to at least a dozen opportunities to purchase a phone, at an average markup of $150 or so over purchase price and duty.

I paid $700CDN for mine, which sounds like a fortune, until you factor in the $400 I earned from selling my previous phone and 30 gig ipod. And let me tell you, this thing is certainly worth the $300 difference. It’s a game changing device. It’s utterly unlike anything I’ve previously seen or used. The screen, the Wi-Fi, the browser, the touch interface and more combine to form a small marvel of usefulness. In three days, I’ve become addicted to this. I can’t imagine going back to life with a regular phone.

This all smacks dangerously of hyperbole and fanboy-ism. I’m shaking my head at myself as I type these words. Yet it’s true. I’ve been in a protracted nerd-gasm for 72 hours, with no sign of it waning. Everyone who sees this thing has the same reaction, btw. If you buy one, be prepared to do a bunch of explaining every time you take a call in public. Hell, my 88 year old grandmother is desperate to see it.

There are of course a couple of caveats. First is not knowing how future Apple updates may affect the unlocked phones. Worse case scenario here is that I may miss out on features included in iPhone software updates. This is a low probability, and will do nothing to limit my enjoyment of the features already available. The second and more pressing caveat concerns the prison-rape that passes for data plan rates here in the great white north. Rogers, my carrier, wants $15 for 1.5mb of data, or $25 for 3mb. This is insane. In practice, this means that I can’t use my phone for web browsing when away from a Wi-Fi connection. Luckily, jumping on an open wifi network is easy. But this makes hating my cell provider just that much easier.

Let me share one last story that highlights my iPhone experience to date. Moments after purchasing it, while driving home, I remembered I had an important call to make in the evening. Knowing I’d forget it, I decided to set an alarm. Never having seen the clock program on the phone, I was able to set a one-time alarm, with my left hand, while driving, in 10 seconds. Try doing that with your old phone.